Saturday, April 26, 2014

Some amazing Native Americans and First Nations from Canada marching on the Washington DC Mall against the Keystone XL Pipeline. My heart is with them, and I hope President Obama is watching (he's traveling in Korea today). According to Rolling Stone, the President has decided to reject the pipeline and is merely waiting for a good time to announce it. I hope and pray that is true. If it is, I'm actually glad he didn't undercut this great show of solidarity by the Cowboy and Indian Alliance and every Native and Conservation Group. There will be other fights and this just brings everyone closer together. There are battles to come because Big Oil never sleeps.

. . . the president is likely to announce his decision on the northern leg of the Keystone XL, the hugely controversial 1,179-mile-long pipeline that would bring tar-sands oil down from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the pipeline – a dramatic move that would light up Democratic voters and donors while further provoking the wrath of Big Oil. Finally, Obama is positioning the U.S. to play a key role in negotiations on a new global-climate treaty that will begin next year, establishing American leadership on climate issues and giving him one last chance to lead the world to a cooler future before he leaves the Oval Office.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On Friday April 18th, after the print version of this story had closed, the State Department announced that the decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline would be delayed due to legal challenges to the pipeline's route, effectively putting off resolution of this controversial issue until after the election. The text has been updated to reflect these latest developments.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Just a few days ago Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Kentucky said that the Fall 2014 elections would circle around the failure of Obama's signature health plan known as Obamacare. Paul Ryan in his most recent scary budget plan calls for a repeal, but strangely also includes ways to amend Obamacare, so citizens can keep what they like but get rid of the rest. Somewhere Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann and others are mumbling to themselves that the purest of pure Tea Party members still deserve a full repeal, as well as the impeachment of Barack Obama, who was never fit to be President in the first place.

Yep, they can plan, they can chew and re-chew their grumblecake, they can churn out nonsensical budgets with thousands of pages, they can vote to repeal Obamacare for the fifty-fifth time or whatever - but as President Obama said recently, Obamacare is here to stay. End of story. Get off it. Move along. Move Forward in spite of yourselves.

And the best thing ever is this New Yorker Cover, showing Ted Cruz, Bachmann, House Speaker John Boehner, and especially Mitch McConnell lining up as whiny toddlers as grown-up President Obama makes them take their medicine. As a piece of political art, it's sublime. And like Obamacare, it's forever.

“This whole enterprise was just an elaborate excuse,” says Barry Blitt about his cover for this week’s issue. “I enjoyed drawing Ted Cruz, John Boehner, and Michele Bachmann as petulant children—and I especially wanted to draw an open-mouthed Mitch McConnell being spoon-fed his meds.”